Update October 2020

I can't remember the last time I did an update. I know I wrote one but never uploaded it.

As usual, everything has just disappeared into the pile of shit that this year has become. I guess like a lot of people I'm not in the greatest of places mentally. To be honest, I'm pretty down at the moment and have been for a while.

I wish I could say it was the toll of all the restrictions and anxiety over coronavirus. That would be the easy answer. But I know it isn't. I'm pissed off and I think I'd be pissed off if everything was normal.

It's back to money worries again. For a couple of months everything was great. There were no demands, it was summer, no need to spend any money. But that has all changed. My daughter has started high school and that transition has ended up costing the best part of a grand.

There's uniform. Apparently that is a cost effective, egalitarian system. The fuck it is. Schools tie up with a sole supplier who price gouge the fuck out of parents because they know they can't go anywhere. You want an egalitarian, cost effective solution? Tell them to wear what they like as long as it comes from Primark. Simple. You'd have a year's worth of clothing for a quarter of what these money-grabbing cunts charge and kids would all be wearing the same. I never wore uniform at all where I grew up. Ever. It caused me zero issues either then or as an adult.

There's all the shit that they need. PE kit. Maths kit. A particular model of calculator. A particular type of laptop. Laptop? Yes, a fucking specific laptop. And no, you can't just buy a refurbed £99 laptop from Ebay. It has to be a particular £300 Chromebook that isn't even half as powerful or durable as that £99 Ebay special would be. So that was August fucked.

Then my car needed MOT'd. Another £300 for that. Then the fucking battery died last week so another £75 there. And tonight it's started making a horrific clunking the moment it goes past 20mph and the steering wheel judders at anything past 40. Fuck knows what that is, I suspect a CV joint so that's probably another £200.

Now Christmas is coming and I'm dreading it because it's another drain. I know that makes me sound miserable but it inevitably becomes a pissing contest with my ex-wife. I'd happily have quite a modest Christmas and my daughter would be more than happy with it. But her mother doesn't see it that way. She'll spend to excess, buy her a shameful amount of stuff. And on Christmas morning I'll have my little pile of presents for after. I hate it on so many levels. I hate how materialistic it is. I hate how bad it makes me feel about myself. I hate how broke it leaves me.

Then there is the weather. I bought a load of logs at the end of spring when they were cheap thinking I'd be starting autumn with most of them. Summer was so shit that they were gone by September. Now I'm back to the fuel poverty of last year. I remember how bad it was, wondering if I should light the fire or just go to bed a bit earlier.

I'm worried about work as well. The project I am working on is due to finish around April/May time. At one point that was a year away. Now it doesn't seem that long. I don't know what there is at the end of it. I'm supposed to be a permanent member of staff but I'm the only person of my discipline in the company and there are no other projects that need my skill right now. I have no idea what they outlook is. Being isolated means you don't get to hear the office chatter and gossip, you don't know what is or isn't coming up. I've got this constant nagging in the back of my mind that come the spring I'm going to be out of work.

I'm so pissed of at the minute and it is all financial. Of all the anxiety I feel, none of it is coronavirus related. As a single parent I didn't exactly have a rich social life to begin with so the impact of these restrictions has been minimal on that. I was lonely and bored before any of this started. That was something else that got on top of me. I've been divorced for five years and my ex-wife still manages to have a significant amount of control over my life. If it wasn't for her I wouldn't have been living like this. I know I'm free to go anywhere but I also know exactly how she would react. If I think I am broke and depressed now then that's nothing compared to the misery she would go out of her way to generate for me if I moved far enough away that we wouldn't have our daughter for equal amounts of time.

My only escape is just getting away on my free weekends. Get out into the wilds, set up a little camp away from everyone and everything. But that's slowly getting eroded. I can't afford the diesel to go far. My car is fucked so I'm not going anywhere until that is fixed. The weather is shit. And the constantly changing restrictions have left me confused as to whether or not I'm even allowed to go anywhere.

I'm burnt out. I've noticed that the time I've been spending with my daughter has left me really mentally exhausted. I know that only happens when my anxiety levels are high. I feel constantly on edge, constantly like I'm on red alert. I walked past the back door last night and freaked out when I saw my reflection and thought it was some outside. I feel ready to go to war at a second's notice. It's exhausting me. I had PTSD in the past and I felt like that then: always ready to go into an aggressive defence mode when it was needed. Only it was never needed. Same as now.

I'm tired. I'm depressed. And I don't even have the excuse of a pandemic to blame. If there was no coronavirus I'd be in the same place. It's payday and with all the bills paid I don't think I've got enough to get me to the end of November. I'm sick of this cycle and I don't know how to escape. Every penny is accounted for and I still don't know why I am skint.

I'm going to try to blog a bit more regularly in the hope that it actually makes me a bit more able to keep a handle on things financially. Talking into the void of the internet is also my only real outlet at the minute. I literally don't have anyone to talk to other than my daughter and that weighs heavy. I need this space to vent.
 

Weekly Update 18th March 2020

What a fucking week.

It is totally crazy and I'm really having a hard time dealing with it. I realise that I'm drifting away from personal finance and into mental health more so I'm going to pull it back first.

Work have actually been incredibly good at pulling a strategy together to get everyone working from home. This is great. Apart from the safety aspect, it represents that, for now at least, they have a commitment to continuity. Almost all of our projects are to the NHS and despite everything else, these still need to keep going. They might slow down but hopefully they will keep going. As opportunistic as it sounds, there may even be additional stuff that we get involved in as a direct result of coronavirus. I'm not looking to profit, I'm looking simply to stay employed. If that can happen then fantastic.

My savings got hammered this week. I've not got a huge amount, I've been squirreling away £150 a month for the last couple of years. I had around £3200 put away. I'd followed all the advice that said, put into tracker funds because they grow well and they're safe as houses. Tracker funds buy blocks of shares in the FTSE100 companies. They are great because you are buying into solid companies for low amounts of money and you don't have to think too much about the technicalities of share dealing. But this week they got hammered. My £3200 nest egg turned into £2500. The "smart" advice is to hold on and ride out the volatility but watching very hard won savings vanish is tough.

I think I have probably blown my budget for the week, too. Like I said in my previous post, I haven't done any panic-buying. I already have about 3 months food stashed in the freezer that I built up over the last year or so. But I don't want to start eating into that. If the shops have stocks then I want to make the most of that. I also realise that I didn't have much stashed for my daughter who is vegetarian. So, as much as I didn't "panic buy", I did a bigger than normal shop this week.

The thing that worries me is getting vegetables. They don't freeze well if bought fresh and with being at work it wasn't practical to buy pre-frozen. So I just bought a bunch of the veg no-one was going crazy over and I'm going to cook that into a basic stew. I'll portion that up and freeze so that I can at least have a base for maybe chilli or spag-bol for my daughter.

Working from home will probably bring a lot of savings as well. I'm not spending £25 a week on fuel. I'm not putting miles on my car. There's no opportunity for spending money at dinnertime. At weekends I'll usually have a trip out somewhere and maybe go walking or visit a castle (I have an English Heritage membership) or do something active but cheap. I rarely spend much, occasionally a pint or a cup of tea, and the main cost is fuel. That's going to be gone.

I'm probably going to cash out my matched betting pot. I don't know if there is much opportunity to pursue it right now. I did a tally tonight and there is £250 cash tied up in it, £140 of which is profit. I'd rather have the cash in my bank in case the bookies fold.

I've also just realised I've got about £150 in John Lewis vouchers that I've earned through cashback. It's harsh but they might end up being a casualty and I don't want to lose the vouchers.

Today I started looking at buying an income protection policy. I'd looked at it a while ago and held off because I was looking for a new job. There's usually an exclusion period on the policies so it made sense not to bother if I was going to be moving anyway. For what I wanted, £1500 a month, it was coming in around £38 a month.

To be honest, I can't really afford £38 a month when I'm already cancelling everything that I don't need already. But if I am going to be working from home then the saving in my fuel costs will pay for it. But the big unknown is whether or not it's worth the paper it is printed on. A lot of insurers' websites are saying no new applications being accepted. I tried calling them and they said they did not know if it was even going to get processed as they've been overwhelmed by applications.

I had a look at the benefits calculator at [entitled to] just to see what I'd be looking at if I lost my job. £272 a week, a little over a grand a month. I pay £625 in rent, there's a chance I could make that work on its own if I cut everything back, make some deals with companies I owe money to, etc. I've got a little cash and whatever my index funds are going to be worth.

I think what has really hit me (and presumably everyone else) so hard mentally is the suddenness with which it hit. We all watched it in China like it was a spectator sport. There were daily stats on what was rising and what was falling. It was an event.

But from the moment that coronavirus touched down here it all kicked in in what feels like days. I'm sure it must have been weeks since the first cases but all the escalation feels really fast. It's a fucking lot to deal with.

There is the basic existential worry. What is going to happen to me and those that I love? Pure and simple, will we survive? That's got to be everyone's first thought. But then comes everything else.

There's the practical shit like being indoors for an unknown period of time and all the preparation involved. There's what is going to happen with work. What about money? How do I survive financially? One of the really saddest facts about the way this has unfolded is that I bet a hell of a lot of people are more worried about their financial wellbeing than physically. There are times I am more worried about keeping a roof over my head than anything else. School closures, working from home, cancelled travel. The list goes on.

Now, most of that is financial and some smug bastard is probably going to say "you just need to get your priorities right". Well, for most people that is their priority. We don't live in a wonderful, egalitarian paradise where we all pull together to make sure our neighbour isn't living a harder life than us. Sorry, but capitalism doesn't stop for a virus. If you can't pull your weight you are dumped on the heap as fast as if it was a mediaeval plague outbreak. Evictions and repossessions aren't stopping just because of a pandemic.

Maybe when we are all living in isolation we'll be able to take some time and deal with everything. I know I need that. More than likely in a couple of weeks things will have settled down and we have a better idea of what the next year will look like. Maybe we get a sense of normality back.

Weirdly, I have kind of enjoyed the mobilisation stage of the last week. You hear people who have served in the military talk about that. You're doing stuff, you are being proactive. You are raising the defences and filling the sandbags. Night-time is what scares me. That's when I stop having things to do and the nightmares start. Literally. My anxiety has rocketed and my sleep app says I'm getting about 60% sleep quality and around 6 hours in bed.

There were a couple of nights I got caught in the whirlwind of cycling between social media, links, the news, Google and back again. I was fucking terrified. One night I was in tears. It worries me about spending the next few months in isolation. My social circle is small enough as it is and I'm liable to not see anyone for long periods of time. Strangely, if I was in the woods in a tent I'd be happy, it's the fact that I'm having to do isolation but whilst doing all the shit of daily life as well that is freaking me out.

I made the decision to quit social media. Specifically, Facebook. There was shit everywhere that we don't need to see or hear. There's a guy at work who is obsessed with all that "friend-of-a-friend" horsehit conspiracy theory crap who insists on showing it to me. I don't care and I don't want to know. I want to treat my mind with the same level of hygiene as I do my hands. I am still using my Instagram account because I can post what I like without having it come the other way.

In order to keep my mental health on an even keel I am working out every day. I've been posting my daily workout on Instagram. I don't know if anyone reads it or follows it but it's a discipline I want to keep up, especially if I am at home alone for long periods.

Tonight I needed to get the house tidy(ish) because the landlord is sending an energy performance surveyor round tomorrow. I put the radio, listened to some music and got on with it. Later I ventured out into Zombieland to get a Mother's Day card and when I got home I watched some comedy and finished my blog. I feel so much better tonight than I did last night or the one before. I've avoided the media as much as possible. There is nothing new to be said. It has been my least anxious night so far.

Well, I'm tired and I think that will do me for this week. I suspect my posts will increase in frequency and I'm considering doing a podcast. This is really for my own sanity and just gives me a way to vent.

Weekly Update 27th February 2020

So back into the long pull towards pay day. Like every month, I've got the usual paranoia about whether or not I'm going to have enough spare cash to make it. I've mentioned before that I've got a day to day countdown of how much I need to have in my current account to meet my direct debits. But I never trust it and I do the same thing every month. It gets to this time and I shit myself that I've not got enough. It kind of looks like I am going to make it. Just. Whatever, doesn't matter how much I scrape by with as long as I make it.

Every month. I just can't seem to ease off and relax and have faith that it will happen. Every month my anxiety shoots through the roof. But I suppose I am lucky, my anxiety is just in the last week. People live with this every single day. I guess for a while that was me but slowly, like over the course of years, I've managed to stretch it out so that the anxiety only happens in the final week. I suppose that is something.

I keep hoping for good news. I keep believing some day my luck is going to change. I did a PPI search just before the deadline last year and I keep thinking I am going to come home and there is going to be a nice, fat cheque waiting for me. It's dragged on and on, apparently there are two accounts that qualify but I've still not heard a thing.

Instead, I came home the other day and it's a final demand for my tax bill. I don't know why but every year I have to do a self-assessment. Again, that is another thing the blows my stress levels through the roof. I work a normal, PAYE job. Straightforward. For some reason I cannot figure out they change my tax code every year and every year I seem to end up under paying when I submit the assessment.

Most years it hasn't been a problem. I'm usually a few hundred quid under. I have a direct debit set up to the government and pay a little every month. But not this year. This year they are up one their hind legs and making final demands for the same few hundred quid. And instead of just letting the direct debit run like always you have to go through a big fucking palaver on the website. OK, it's maybe not that complicated but it's the wording of it. It is written basically as if you are asking them to consider being merciful and you have to acknowledge your unending gratitude to these cunts.

There is a real change in tone when it comes to tax. The cynic in me suspects the change in government. They are not going to chase Amazon or Virgin, they are going to fuck you and me. You can really see it coming in anything that involves you interacting with the government about anything financial. It doesn't bode well, it feels like we are headed to a good old fucking on the village green.

I've run out of credit on my daily credit card again as well. It happened with about 10 days to go and I'm not really sure why. I suspect I might have underpaid last month. So while I was celebrating having a little more cash in the bank that month I was actually headed towards maxing out my card. I've been having to pay for food and the basics of daily life on my debit card. Cash straight out of my bank. Hence why the panic about having enough til the payday.

I've fucked up this week as well. I've been coming out of the depression I was in last week. I was feeling in a celebratory mood so been buying lunches every day. Not much, maybe 3 quid a day, but it still mounts up. Food is how I medicate my moods sometimes. It's the thing that surprises most as I tend to eat really healthily and I'm fanatical about exercise. But I also know I do that as I have a really addictive personality and if I didn't I would be a fat fuck.

Last week seems like a lifetime ago. My depression phases are always like that. After my divorce it was long, sustained lows but now it tends to be 3 or 4 days, maybe a week, of intense low followed by a clear ramping up the other side. When I climb out of the pit it always feels like it was a very long time ago and I don't know what the fuck I was ever complaining about.

Work is still pissing me off and I am still on the lookout for a new job. I have grown to fucking despise the place. My salary hasn't changed in six years and now I'm being moved to a new location about 15 miles further away. It's not everyone, just a handful of people and I am one of that handful. It is going to cost another 20 quid a week or so in fuel. It also fucks up my childcare obligations as I can't make my drop off and pick-up times any more. I'm looking at either cutting my hours (and therefore salary) or paying for extra childcare.

Not a fucking question about whether this causes me problems, whether it is manageable. Just told to live with it or fuck off. And sure enough my contract has a clause in it that allows for this.

I fucking hate these people. I am paying for four millionaires to get richer. There will be no thanks. I might get another £50 Amazon voucher (I buy fuck all from Amazon) but that's it.

So at the moment I am doing my best to find another job that pays better and treats staff better. But I can feel myself teetering on another depression over it because those two things don't seem to exist in the same place.